Then from 1957 to 1963 he studied composition with Vadim Salmanov, Victor Voloshinov and Orest Evlakhov, and piano with L. Logovinski at the Leningrad Conservatory.
His second wife was the singer Galina Kulichenko, and the couple had a son, Vsevolod.
His third wife was the harpist Irina Donskaya, and their marriage produced a son, Andrei.
He tried to use some experimental and modernist ideas like twelve-tone or aleatoric techniques, but was much more attached to the native traditions of his homeland.
Tishchenko's Requiem, to the forbidden poem by Anna Akhmatova, written in the period of political stagnation in 1966, was a courageous cultural gesture.